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LONDON—It all rather depends on how one prefers one’s Wimbledon, wouldn’t you say?

Some like the shining stars of the sport to soar at the world’s most important tennis tournament, creating colossal confrontations between the very best in the final stages of this famous fortnight.

Or, some like the upsets, the surprises, the shocks. Some love to see the mighty fall, and in men’s tennis in particular, so few have dominated the big tournaments for so long that the breakthrough of a new face or two would be welcomed.

So it depends on what you like. Some years, the competition pretty much goes according to Hoyle.

Then there are years like this year, when being highly ranked seems like a curse.

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The dismissal of the seemingly unbeatable Serena Williams on Monday, beaten by No. 23-seeded Sabine Lisicki of Germany, just added to the casualty list of top stars at the All England Club over the past nine days.

Last week was filled with players outside the top 100 beating the likes of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova, a week that left even British hopeful Andy Murray “on edge” because of the bizarre results.

Murray said some of the greatest matches in tennis history have been fought on these lawns in recent years between the greats of the game, so losing top seeds early can eliminate those moments of history.

“But (upsets) can be good for the game too,” he said. “The more players competing for the major tournaments, the better.”

Williams had won 34 straight matches and 19 straight sets going into her match against Lisicki, was the defending Wimbledon champion and recently captured the French Open with relative ease.

Let’s just say her name had already been pencilled into one of the two slots in Saturday’s women’s final.

But a funny thing happened. Lisicki arrived with her thunderbolt serve, stole the first set, absorbed a Williams haymaker in the second set, fell behind 0-3 in the third set and then steadied her nerves just enough to storm back and win the match.

The German does have one unique distinction: the last four Wimbledons in which she has played, she’s beaten the woman who just won the French Open.

“I just feel comfortable here,” she smiled after her big win.

That meant seven of the top 10 seeds in the women’s draw have been eliminated before the quarter-finals, a stunning total.

“For me, any loss is extremely tough to overcome,” said Williams. “So, again, I don’t think it’s a huge shock. (Lisicki) is a great player. Her ranking has no effect on what she should be. She should be ranked higher. Especially on grass, she just has, you know, a super, super game to play well on grass.”

On the men’s side, the carnage has been slightly less, with five of the top 10 seeds out before the quarters.

Still, combined with the women’s draw, that’s a 60 per cent attrition rate for top-10 players at Wimbledon this year, the early loss of an awful lot of star power.

“When results like that can happen to a player as good as Serena, then there’s no reason they can’t happen to me,” said Murray, perfect in 12 sets played so far. “That’s why I’m not getting ahead of myself.”

But do all these startling results impact, or hurt, Wimbledon? Not really.

On the business side, it seems not to matter how many upsets there are or stars there are not, as Wimbledon’s already massive popularity and profitability is surging.

Every day, about 40,000 fans stream through the gates, and the queues seem even longer for tickets this year. Tennis fans are willing to wait upwards of 10 hours just to get in the gates late in the day for three or four hours of play.

The All England Club declared a two-week Wimbledon profit of $60 million (Cdn.) last year, which is likely to increase even though prize money for the players has increased by 40 per cent this year. Just for playing a first-round singles match, players now receive $37,600 (Cdn.).

Meanwhile, a new Wimbledon Master Plan for the 17-hectare (42-acre) site envisions new courts, a new underground plaza and a retractable roof over Court One by 2019, joining the other main stadium, Centre Court, as a covered facility.

The cost of all this? Maybe three-quarters of a billion dollars. Maybe more.

It will all go ahead, and the profits will continue to soar whether the big names make it to the finals, whether a British player ever wins the tournament again or whether there are upsets that create unlikely matchups like an all-Poland men’s quarter-final between Lukas Kubot and Jerzy Janowicz on Wednesday.

That’s Wimbledon in 2013. Magnificent and invincible on the grass, utterly impregnable against the tides and variables of competition.

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